If you do a little research into Raber Portable Storage Barns in Montgomery, Indiana, you’ll notice that the company operates on three principles.
Trust, quality, and expertise.
“We want the customers to trust that we’re going to build a good product,” says owner Marvin Raber. “The way we do that is we start right in the early process.
“One of my philosophies with customers is I want to get them everything they want as far as product and options, but I’ll tell them up front if they say something that they don’t need, and I see that is not necessary.
“I’ll tell them, you know, I do want every bit of your money that I can get, but I’m not the salesperson who’s going to push something that won’t benefit you. Some customer comes in and wants insulation in the floor. Really?
What do you want it for? What’s your story? You really don’t need insulation.
“That earns their confidence and trust when you tell them that you don’t want to upsell just for the sake of upselling.”
When it comes to quality, Raber says his business has always been all about quality.
“We have a quality guy who goes through each building,” he says. “Things still happen. If we go out to the customer, and they see something they don’t like, we’ll fix it.”
Regarding expertise, Raber points out the company has been building portable structures since 2001.
“We’ve seen about everything, but we’re still learning as we go,” he says. “Probably that’s the key to our success: never think you know it all.
“And let the employees lead and give me their feedback. I want to be open-ended and receive the employee’s feedback. We’re always adapting with the market.”
It’s amazing that Raber Portable Storage Barns has been in business for more than 20 years since Raber had no interest in building sheds.
“When I was a kid, my dad made sheds, little metal sheds, for a lumber company locally, and I worked for him. I helped him and he paid me a little bit of money to do that,” he shares. “And I hated it.
“After school, nobody wants to beat nails in, so I said, you know what, I’m never going to do sheds. I’m going to get away from sheds and do something else.
“So, I went to work in construction. I got married. And I started thinking, you know what, I’m going to start making sheds.
“For a while, it was just me and my wife. Then we added a couple of part-time employees and just kept it pretty small until about 2017.
“At the old shop, we had like four or five people, and then in 2017 we added this shop. We have 10 to 12 full-time employees in the shop. It’s growing, and God’s been good to us.”
POPULAR STRUCTURES, CUSTOMIZATIONS
Raber says the company’s “bread and butter” structures have always been metal utility sheds.
“That has never really changed,” he says. “It’s 12 by 16, 12 by 20 metal utility sheds. Garages are probably second, and I can see at some point garages overtaking the sheds. Even with that, with all the customization we do, (utility sheds are) still our bread and butter.
“We’re in the Midwest, so we don’t have the higher-end clients that you have out on the coast.
“Ten years ago, metal sheds were probably 80 percent of what we did. Today it’s more like 60/40 metal versus wood, with some vinyl.
“Wood is really gaining in popularity. That’s because of our expansion into more urban areas. We’re in West Lafayette, Kokomo. Those are two more affluent areas, and they have HOAs.”
Why metal utility sheds? Raber Portable Storage Barns works with two major metal suppliers, which many areas don’t have.
“And it’s primarily an agricultural area,” says Raber. “With the pole barns, they use metal, and it’s just kind of gained popularity. It’s almost a guarantee if you’re dealing with somebody out in the country, they want a metal shed.
“It’s the cheapest version because of less labor, and it’s hardly any maintenance with a 40-year manufacturer warranty. They use a wood frame similar to a pole barn construction, but it’s studs with a metal covering.”
Ramps are a popular customization for Raber customers, but he says the company does a lot of spray foam insulation.
“Hailey Paint says we’re the spray foam kings because I think we’re their No. 1 buyer,” says Raber. “Spray foam slowed down a little bit this year, but we’ve spray foamed a lot of buildings for clients.
“Mostly, it’s because it keeps it cooler in the humid Indiana summers. This is my pitch on insulation, if I had a shed and I wanted to set my stuff in it, I would have 1 inch of spray foam insulation because it just makes it cooler in the summer. Plus, it helps prevent any type of mold or anything like that.”
Raber also sells many electrical packages.
“We have three different packages,” he says. “We have our standard, premium, and then we have what we call a commercial, more heavy-duty for a workshop or something like that.”
THE RABER WAY
Raber’s shop has five bays where employees build structures from start to finish.
“We do not do assembly line,” he points out. “We’ve done some research on that and thought about it, and we may switch it at some point, but currently the five-bay shop works well with two guys in each bay, a couple guys cutting out.
“I think it helps with employees. I don’t think employees like assembly- line production. They always have to do the same thing over and over.
“I think our employees’ attention is better than a lot of people who simply bang out floors or make walls. It gets kind of boring, I think, and it works for us. It’s just the kind of model we started with.”
Raber’s “cut guy” cuts all the materials for a shed, puts them on carts, and takes them to each bay.
“Our goal is to try to keep those two guys at their bay at all times,” he says. “It doesn’t always happen, but they’re supposed to stay at their stations and material is supposed to flow to them.”
To sell the sheds, Raber uses online marketing and shed lots.
“I feel pretty good as far as our process online,” he shares. “A customer goes on our website and designs the shed using our IdeaRoom designer and submits the quote. The quote comes into HubSpot. From HubSpot it is delegated to our sales team by zip code.”
Raber says that with HubSpot, the company is active, but strategic in doing follow-ups.
“I’ve heard some people say that they call 11-12 times. We don’t do that,” he says. “Our system is to send them a quote, wait two days, and then do a phone call.
“If we can’t contact them, we’ll send a text message, another email, and then if there’s no contact, we put them into our marketing funnel for retargeting.”
Raber points out that because of its online system, when the company opens new locations, they are already equipped with a lot of leads.
“It’s not just setting up sheds,” he says. “When we open a new location, we always do a lot of Google paid ads and improve the SEO.
“We do have a secondary sub shop. That’s a smaller shop, but the sales locations are primarily sales locations. At most of them, we sell the swing sets, the carports.”
Previously, Raber set up sheds at a hardware store, a lumber yard, or other available locations.
“We now primarily lease all our locations and put our own people in there. All our salespeople are on an hourly plus commission.
“I have people call me all the time, want to sell some sheds here? Well, it doesn’t fit our model.”
Raber’s slow time starts around Thanksgiving.
“Typically, we have enough lead time to get into January, at least put up inventory, and then pick back up around March,” he shares.
“I think August was our busiest month this year. In the springtime, we’ve found that you have a lot of people that think they want sheds, more tire kickers than the customers you get in the fall.”
From the time a customer designs and purchases a Raber shed to having it delivered ran about three to five weeks for most of this year.
However, Raber says that because of the amount of business, it recently increased to six to eight weeks.
OVERCOMING CHALLENGES
When asked about major challenges the company has faced, and overcome, Raber says two things stick out.
“In about 2008-09, we were making a fair number of sheds, probably 200 to 300 a year, nothing like we do now, and wasn’t making money,” he shares. “I couldn’t figure out why. I knew hardly anything about business. I just went in like a lot of people, probably. Just made so much an hour. Then we grew and added employees. Then I learned about overhead and profit margin. I talked to Coach Thom Finn.
“He said, first of all, you’ve got to raise your prices. I said, we can’t, and he said, yeah, you can. We sat down and I went through and broke down each building, and he said, you need to be looking at this for profit margins, and that’s when we started to really grow. He helped us in a lot of ways.”
Of course, COVID was a big challenge.
“The phone just stopped ringing for about a week, and then after that, just boom. Everybody called,” says Raber. “Then it was a whole supply- chain issue and price increases.
“One of the things that we did during COVID, we had an extremely long lead time and we never went back to the customer and said, we need to raise our price. That’s one thing I’m proud of.
“We kept the price the same for a while, but it was not working. But even with the 14 to 16-week lead time, the materials jumped and there were a lot of sheds we actually lost money on. Then we put on some material surcharges and quickly got ahead of that.
“Today, there are shed companies all over. You have to figure out a way to stay ahead of the curve. That’s our primary goal. Options, service, whatever it is to differentiate us from the others.”
Even with the increase in shed builders in the industry, Raber doesn’t see the market reaching oversaturation.
“Here’s my philosophy,” he says. “We’re seeing our sales ahead this year versus last year. I always tell my team, you can’t look at data during ’20, ’21, and ’22. It’s just such a blip. We just had all this money, and everybody wanted sheds.
“I think now we’re seeing more return to normal, and who knows what the economy is going to do, but sheds have always been good during slowdown economies.
“If the U.S. keeps getting all these immigrants, and we all continue to have kids, and they all want backyard sheds, and most people can afford a shed. I think it’s just a huge opportunity.
“We have so many different clients that we work with. For example, we work with about three different mobile home parks. This big company we work with manages parks in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. They’ll order 20- 50 sheds at a time for a huge location, and then they’ll take their sheds, and they’ll rent them to the owners.
“I tell people that it’s a win-win. It wins for us. It wins for the mobile home park because they get the parks cleaned up, and then they get some steady income.”
FUTURE PLANS
Looking ahead, Raber sees the company as a fixture in the community.
“My wife says, you know, you’re big enough, but I believe in what the Bible says that if you have talents, you need to work to keep those talents,” he says.
“For me, it’s never been about financial gain, but it’s more to offer a Christian workplace for people in our community. One day a week we have devotions with the whole crew.
“I could not do this without my employees. I value my employees. My son-in-law is my director of operations, and he’s not the director of operations because he’s my son-in-law.
“He came into the company shortly after he was married to my daughter, and he quickly became a guy that people went to.
“We decided he’s the person to lead this company to the next level.”
